


Technically, no.

by futuresailors



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint is not even there but is still kind of a mess, Conversations, Fluff, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Natasha is injured, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sickfic, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve is sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresailors/pseuds/futuresailors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“...we’re stuck like this until our lives become less unfortunate.”</i>
</p><p>When Steve and Natasha are both forced to sit out an Avengers mission, they hang out together and have a conversation about childhood, Christmas specials, and Clint Barton. Not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Technically, no.

**Author's Note:**

> *Born out of my obsession with the idea of Steve and Natasha having a really affectionate, jokey, completely platonic relationship.  
> *There are some probably ridiculous hand-wavey fake science explanations in an attempt to justify my favorite tropes.  
> *Takes place in an unspecified post-Winter Soldier time where the whole gang is living together.  
> *I did not set out to talk about Christmas specials at such length, or really at all, but here we are.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

“SHIT,” Natasha yelps as her leg gives out from underneath her and she slams into the kitchen counter. Being unable to control her body’s every movement is a foreign experience, but a misstep during training this morning has led to a twisted knee that won’t support any weight and an afternoon spent limping, hopping, and defeatedly dragging herself through the tower. And now, due to what Tony had nonchalantly referred to as a “low-grade alien invasion”, everyone has gone off on a mission without her.

Or so she thought. As she attempts to pull herself up onto a barstool, she hears a rustling from the sofa a few feet away, followed by a cough.

“Steve?” she calls, grunting as she tries to balance on her good leg.

“Mmhmm.” comes the sleepy-sounding reply. His head becomes visible as he pulls himself into a sitting position, and he turns to face her.

“Hey Nat. What happened to you?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.

“Mishap in the gym earlier; I blew out my knee. Fucking _Barton._ ”

Steve cocks an eyebrow and smirks. “Were you, now?”

“Oh shut it. You were in the army, Rogers, don’t act like you don’t know how swearing works. ‘Fucking’ is being used as a modifier in this case, very much not a verb, and you know it. The injury was Clint’s fault, is my point. He cannot follow directions.” Steve grins at her innocently, obviously pleased that he has managed to throw off her train of thought. Not many people can do that.

“Directions for using weapons, I mean! Battle maneuvers! Shut up.”

They stare at each other for a split second, then both burst out laughing. Natasha likes that she and Steve have become actual friends over the past few months, that he makes jokes and calls her "Nat." That she lets him call her "Nat." Truth be told, he’s probably the only person who could get away with giving her a hard time about Barton like that. Tony, for example, would most likely have found himself flipped over the table for such a remark, busted knee or not.

Steve’s laugh turns into another cough, and Natasha looks at him more closely as she realizes that, hold on, not only is he here with her and not out with the rest of the team, he was just asleep on the couch at 3 in the afternoon. And she’s pretty sure he’s wearing sweatpants.

“Wait, are you _sick_?” She didn’t think that was possible, what with the super soldier serum and all.

“Um, technically no?” he says, then promptly sneezes three times in a row.

“Explain yourself,” she says, waving her hand toward the two tissue boxes on the end table, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and - not to put too fine a point on it, but - _the sweatpants Captain America is wearing_.

“Ah. OK. Well, the short version is that Bruce and I were bored. The long version is that Bruce and I were bored so I agreed to let him try and research the serum’s effects on my immune system, and he...aggravated it somehow.”

“Aggravated it?”

“I honestly do not understand the science behind it, but I think basically whatever he was doing triggered some sort of reaction and my body responded as if I was actually sick. But there weren’t any actual germs or anything, just Bruce messing around. So for all intents and purposes I have a cold, but you can’t catch it or anything.”

“That’s sort of adorable.”

“Yes, adorable is exactly how it feels,” Steve sniffs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh at your misfortune. Although, to be fair, you were sort of laughing at mine a second ago.”

“Fair enough,” he says, and sits up a little taller so he can see her better. “Does it hurt?” he asks, gesturing toward her knee.

“It’s actually not too bad at the moment, I just can’t really put any weight on it. But I’d be useless at trying to repel whatever alien force of the month we’re currently dealing with.”

“Yeah, me too, I guess.”

“But I bet you tried, didn’t you?” she grins. Steve laughs hoarsely.

“Bruce wouldn’t let me go! I told him I was fine but I think he felt guilty.”

"You do kind of look awful. It's probably in poor taste to use the expression 'like death warmed up' about Captain America, but..."

"Incredibly tactless," he says, but he's laughing again.

“No, you deserve a break, honestly. You’ve had a tough year."

“I guess,” he responds, with a sad little half-smile. Natasha’s not always sure whether she should reference what Steve’s been through recently, no matter how obliquely, but it’s not like it can really be ignored. After all, his presumed-dead best friend, whose whereabouts and mental state are still unknown, tried to kill him only a few months ago. He does deserve to take an afternoon nap in the living room on a weekday, at the very least.

“Well,” she says, breaking the slightly awkward silence, “since I can’t catch any sort of plague from you, mind if I come and sit over there? Stark definitely chose style over comfort when he picked out these barstools.” She places both hands firmly on the counter, trying to psych herself up to hobble a few feet.

“Hey, wait, I’ll help you,” Steve says, and before she can tell him _no, you’re sick (sort of), lie down_ , he’s up and has a muscular arm around her waist. She sighs and leans her head against his too-warm shoulder as they gently make their way back to the sofa.

“Wow, you’ve got a fever and everything, huh?” she remarks, brushing the back of her hand against Steve’s cheek as he begins to settle back into his nest of blankets and she gingerly stretches out her leg. “Jackpot.”

“Yeah, lucky me,” he says before launching into a coughing fit that makes the entire couch shake.

“I’m sorry,” she says after he’s taken a few deep breaths, “You probably feel like shit; I should stop making fun of you.”

“No, it’s okay. It _is_ kind of funny, and it’s my own fault for deciding that boredom was a good enough reason to wander down to the lab.” Natasha laughs.

“ _That’s_ true,” she says, and shifts slightly so that she’s leaning against him. “Is that ok? I’m trying to find the most comfortable position for the knee.”

“Uh huh, that’s fine. It’s nice, actually. Warm.” He sneezes and then groans a little bit, laying his head back against the couch. “Ah, just like the good old days.”

“Yeah, this must be so weird, right?” she says, scooting in even closer and making a soft noise of approval as she finally finds the exact angle at which her injured knee stops throbbing. Steve closes his eyes and nods.

“It’s weird because I’ve never been sick in this body - although I have, to be fair, been shot and stabbed and almost died in this body. I’m much more used to that.”

Natasha isn’t sure if he’s trying to be funny. Captain America may have a stoic and serious reputation, but Steve Rogers actually has a great sense of humor, especially about himself. There’s nothing funny about this, not really, but his life has been so completely ridiculous that sometimes you have to laugh a little. She doesn’t think this is one of those times, though, so she stays quiet. Steve clears his throat.

“No, the weirdest thing is that I feel - well, I feel kind of terrible, obviously- but also sort of...I don’t know. Not nostalgic, exactly. I don’t miss being sick all the time. But it reminds me of being a kid. Like sense memory, I guess? It reminds me of my mom? Like she should be around when I feel like this. And...other people, too.” He opens his eyes and looks at her.

He didn’t say Bucky’s name, but it hangs in the air anyway, and they’re both quiet for a minute.

“That makes perfect sense,” Natasha eventually tells him. “I get it.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. Like I said, it’s all really strange, and I’m sure under different circumstances I could explain it all more eloquently. But there you go.” He puts his arm around her shoulder, then coughs again. She reaches up to rub his back, and he leans appreciatively into her touch, looking miserable.

“I would offer to get up and go get you some soup or something,” Natasha says, “but that would probably end in disaster, so we’re stuck like this until our lives become less unfortunate.”

“We are quite the pair,” Steve agrees.

“This sofa is a regular Island of Misfit Toys.”

“A what?”

“Oh, come on. You’ve been around for three 21st-century Christmases and have never seen _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_? I was never even in this country as a child and I’ve seen _Rudolph_ more than once. Clint made sure I did; he loves that shit,” Natasha says, smiling faintly.

“I didn’t know there was a movie; I’ll add it to the list,” Steve says.

“Or we could watch it right now,” she suggests.

“But it’s _June._ ”

“You’re not feeling well and we are cuddling on the couch with no one else to disturb us; that is a perfect storm of animated Christmas special viewing conditions that will most likely never happen for you again. _And_ , not for nothing, your nose is actually bright red right now; you’d match. This is a Halley’s Comet of TV-watching situations, Steve.”

A mumbled “I’m not _cuddling_ ” is his only response to Natasha’s somewhat inexplicable strong feelings about stop-motion animation.

“You are, in fact, being incredibly cuddly right now. But it’s fine; you’re sick. I bet you were a snuggly drunk, too. Maybe Bruce can figure out a way to recreate that now, as an apology. I’ll ask him when he gets home. Now hand me the remote.”

Steve sighs, looking both resigned and amused. “All right, fire away.”

Nat turns on the TV, intent on seeing whether Christmas specials can even be ordered on demand during the summer or if she’s going to have to recruit JARVIS to find her a link, but is instead immediately distracted by the local news filling the screen. “AVENGERS (PARTIALLY) ASSEMBLE” reads the caption across the bottom, as the anchor gives a recap of the team’s victory against something that looks like an invasion of angry metallic bees.

“Oh, I guess we saved the world again,” Steve deadpans, reaching for a tissue as he watches a replay of Sam swooping dramatically downward and using his wings to direct the swarm towards Tony’s repulsors.

Natasha considers the scene with a raised eyebrow. “Pretty sure this one was not really a significant threat, or the the two of us would have had to suck it up and actually help.”

“I’m not actually sure how much use the shield would have been against individual things that small.”

“Nah, you’d have been fine. You could have bounced them off of it towards Thor’s lightning or something. But I bet _Clint_ , on the other hand, was shit out of luck. Notice they haven’t shown any highlights featuring him yet, trying to hit every individual robot insect with an arrow.”

“He could do that and you know it,” Steve says. “Why do you always have to give him such a hard time?”

She points at her swollen knee. He snorts.

“Okay, I guess it’s understandable today, then.”

“He can handle it,” she says fondly. Steve glances at the tiny silver arrow on the chain around her neck, which he has always noticed but never commented on.

“What’s going on with you guys?” he asks.

“He fucked up my leg with his stupidity so I’m mocking him.”

“You know what I mean. You guys are...together, though, right?” She reaches over, puts a hand on his face, and looks him straight in the eye.

“Technically, no.”

“Very cute, Agent Romanov.”

“I try,” she says. Steve coughs and gives her a tired smile.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll get the full, overly dramatic rundown on this later, and Tony will make it all sound much more exciting than it actually. Do you still want to try and watch _Rudolph_ before they get back?” Natasha asks. She grabs the remote again without waiting for an answer.

Steve is snoring softly with his head on her shoulder before Hermey the elf even reveals his dream of being a dentist. He’ll just have to have Island of Misfit Toys references explained to him another day, Natasha supposes as she affectionately strokes his hair. Maybe when it’s more seasonally appropriate.

By the time everyone else finally comes home, Steve is completely down for the count, with his head in her lap and a blanket messily tucked around him. The returning Avengers all clamor out of the elevator but quiet down when they notice the two of them curled into each other on the sofa, and make their way silently to individual rooms, undoubtedly to pass out themselves. As Clint passes, he gives Natasha a sheepish wave. She grins and cheerfully gives him the finger.

She falls asleep there not long after, with her hand resting on Steve’s flushed face. When she wakes in the morning, he’s still next to her on the couch, sitting up and holding a mug of tea.

“Hey,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better, thanks. I really appreciate you staying with me yesterday.”

“It’s not like I was going anywhere else.”

“How about you? The knee still hurting?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be fine. I have to go to training and kick Barton’s ass later.” Steve smiles.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, my affectionate feelings for Barton manifest as insults.”

“I was going to ask if we could finish watching _Rudolph_ since I fell asleep last night, but good to know.” Natasha rolls her eyes.

“I guess I can humor you.”

They watch Christmas specials for the next four hours.


End file.
